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The protest had been the biggest of the transitional period, and Hamdok lost no time in claiming it as his own. That night, he gave a statement. The Sudanese people have made it clear, he said, that there is no going back to the old regime. The next morning, back at Ozone, one diplomat plaintively …

One friend, whom I will call Fatima, told me her answer later, as we sat in the quiet garden at the Ethiopian embassy eating decent kitfo away from prying eyes. It was a fantasy to think that the transition would have gone anywhere without the international community, Fatima told me. Revolution mig…

She was enthusiastic about investing in human rights training for the Sudanese police. Unfortunately, she said, according to the embassy’s local perception studies, “people don’t trust the police, and we don’t want to invest irresponsibly.”

“Imagine,” she said, sighing, “a country where people …

We were at Ozone, a café in Khartoum 2, an area of the city popular with expats. I didn’t like the place. It was a well-watered fantasy, full of Khartoum’s favored families and the busy heads of humanitarian agencies. Yet there I was. Everyone wanted to meet at Ozone. The best waffles in the world,…

Growing up, I thought that real politics was collective struggle, but over the past decade I’d begun to fear the era of mass movements had come to an end. My political life had desiccated. I briefed diplomats and wrote angry missives for the United Nations and Swiss NGOs about brutal government mil…